THAT THERE MAY BE A FAIRER SOCIETY IN GHANA - ONE IN WHICH ALL THE PEOPLE, NOT JUST A POWERFUL AND GREEDY FEW, BENEFIT FROM THE NATION'S WEALTH!

Thursday, 25 September 2014

Ghanaian Healthcare Professionals Must Be More Compassionate Of The Poor

Today I am sharing an article culled from the BBC News website.

It is the extraordinary and inspiring story of a British Doctors Without Borders volunteer, Cokie van der Velde, who looks after Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. It is entitled: "Why I'll risk my life for Ebola patients".

One hopes it will inspire healthcare professionals in Ghana - and make them more willing to help those unfortunate enough to contract the Ebola fever virus in Ghana: should it ever appear here too (God forbid).

Above all, one hopes that it will make our healthcare professionals more compassionate and considerate in the way they treat poor people.

To begin with, it is important to make the point that there is no question that many Ghanaian healthcare professionals are compassionate individuals - who remember the Hippocratic oath they've taken: and are obviously guided by it daily in their work.

However, there is a significant number of them, who alas appear to despise the poor - and treat them with obvious contempt. Refusing to see the sick and abandoning patients to die as a result of strike action over pay is an obvious example, in my view.

Years ago, I was told by one of her colleagues at the time she was doing her orientation at a public-sector healthcare facility to which she had been attached - prior to taking the pre-registration Medical and Dental Council examination for foreign doctors wanting to work in Ghana - that there was a marked difference between the kind and gentle way my German medical doctor wife, Birgit, interacted with sick poor people - and the abrupt way that some of her colleague Ghanaian healthcare professionals treated them.

Indeed, the unfortunate truth, is that it is hard not to be appalled by the stories that are recounted to one by affected individuals, and the reports one reads and hears in the Ghanaian media, about the callous attitude shown by many Ghanaian healthcare professionals, to the poor, in healthcare facilities across the country.

Alas, in my own case, I did observe that there was indeed a difference between my wife's egalitarian approach to poor people wherever she encountered them - which struck me as contrasting sharply with the shabby way that many poor people are treated in public-sector healthcare facilities, by the selfsame professionals who toady up to the wealthy, on a daily basis, when on duty in private hospitals across the country.

Ghanaian healthcare professionals need to be more compassionate of the poor - especially at a time when we are all threatened by the Ebola fever outbreak in the west African sub-region. Please read on:

Why I'll risk my life for Ebola patients

Hundreds
of foreign aid workers are in West Africa treating people with Ebola.
One of them is Cokie van der Velde who has just flown from the UK to
Liberia. She explains why she has left the safety of her home to face
the deadly virus.

I was first in Liberia five weeks ago and I believe the
situation is now much worse. Back then, our treatment centres had
already run out of room and we were starting to put people in corridors.

In the centre, people groan and cry out - the smell of blood,
diarrhoea and vomit is awful - unfortunately there is also a very
pervading smell of dead bodies.

I can only leave it to your imagination to understand what a
pile of bodies smells like after a week in very hot, moist surroundings -
it makes you feel sick quite a lot of the time.

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Nobody else has been near them for days. They must feel very lonely and very frightened”

I am responsible for infection
control which means that my first job is to ensure the safety of the
people I work with and of myself. We have to wear our scrubs, then two
or three pairs of gloves, a completely waterproof suit and a head
covering, a mask, goggles and a big apron over the top.

It's incredibly hot and humid - when you undress back to the
scrubs afterwards it looks like someone has just poured a bucket of
water over you.

I try to go round the patients and help where I can and give
them some water. I'll change and wash patients and just try and give
some physical contact to each person because nobody else will touch
them, nobody else has been near them for days. They must feel very
lonely and very frightened.

I don't know how much comfort I am bringing to people when
I'm dressed in a mask and goggles and completely covered from head to
foot. If we have children at the treatment centre, which we quite often
do, I'll try to bring them some toys and have a little game with them if
I can.

Cokie van der Velde also helped Ebola patients in Guinea earlier this year

Depending on how many people have died, I'll then start the
very unpleasant job of moving the bodies. We put people in body bags, we
write the names on the body bags and we move them to the morgue.

If the relatives want to come and see the body and say
goodbye, we set up a viewing and I try to make that as pleasant as I can
- if that's at all possible. I'll put flowers round the body bag and if
it's a child I'll put some toys around them. I'll also put the toys in
the body bag with them when we seal it up.

You can't let the relatives touch the body - they are just
allowed to view it and then we seal it up forever. It's a very sad
moment.
I do feel fear, I can't deny that.

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Last time I was in Liberia,
sometimes I'd think, "I feel a bit feverish", or I'd wake up during the
night and take my temperature. If I had a slight sore throat - one of
the first signs of Ebola - I'd start to worry I had the virus.

There is always an element of risk when I work for MSF - I
could be caught in crossfire, I could always pick up a nasty disease and
there's the small chance of kidnap. And normally I would put that risk
at about one in 1,000. So it's not that high. But I must admit, when I
sat down and thought about it, I would say the risk for me now is about
one in 10.

I've made sure that my will and my house and everything are
in order so that if for some reason I don't come back at least it will
be easy for my relatives to carry on. I have had my children, I've had
my grandchildren and of course I still want to be part of their lives
but it's not like I'm leaving small children behind. I think it's ok for
me to go and risk my life and my family understands.
I've been doing this type of work for 12 years and they are
used to the fact that I go away but this time it is more concerning for
them.

If they don't hear from me for a while they do start to get
very worried but they accept this is something I feel that I have to do
and I think in a way they are a little bit proud that I'm willing to
risk my own life to help others.

One of the reasons I enjoy working for MSF is the challenge.
Before I started working for them, one of my passions was rock climbing.
So it is probably something in my personality that makes me accept
these challenges.

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It's made me think about my own death and what will happen when I die”

I go partly because of my belief
that there should be social justice in the world - that there should be
some sort of equality. The people I'm helping are part of the human
race, part of humanity - in that respect, all people for me are the
same. I feel I have as much obligation to help a stranger as I do to
help someone I know.

That last time I was in Liberia I must have moved hundreds of
bodies but only three people survived during the month that I was
there. I don't think you can see that many bodies without viewing death
in a different way.

I try to always make sure that the team I'm working with
stops for a moment to say goodbye to the person before we put them in
the body bag. We still try to keep a reverence for the dead. Even though
I'm not religious, I hope I can bring some sort of spirituality to that
moment and some respect to the grieving of the relatives.

Putting all these bodies into body bags, I sometimes can't
help imagining my own body being put into one - I especially think about
that in the middle of the night. It's made me think about my own death
and what will happen when I die. But when you see so much death, you
accept that this is really just part of life - that we live and die.

That doesn't cheapen people's lives but I think it brings
home to me the reality of death, whereas in our society, or at least in
my life, death is sort of ignored. It's something that happens but you
keep it in the back of your mind. Now it's very much in the front of my
mind and I accept that it will eventually happen, sooner or later.

I do enjoy my job, I don't think you could do what I do if
you didn't enjoy your work. I can't say I particularly enjoy working
with dead bodies but there's a lot of camaraderie - there's a
satisfaction when you do get it right and eventually we will get this
epidemic under control.

When that happens there will be great elation and the
satisfaction of knowing I did a job that maybe not everyone could have
done and that I played a small part in helping to overcome this.